Nina Tandon: Could tissue engineering mean personalized medicine?

Translator: Joseph Geni
Reviewer: Morton Bast I’d like to show you a video of some of the models I work with. They’re all the perfect size, and they don’t have an ounce of fat. Did I mention they’re gorgeous? And they’re scientific models? (Laughs) As you might have guessed, I’m a tissue engineer, and this is a video of some of the beating heart that I’ve engineered in the lab. And one day we hope that these tissues can serve as replacement parts for the human body. But what I’m going to tell you about today is how these tissues make awesome models. Well, let’s think about the drug screening process for a moment. You go from drug formulation, lab testing, animal testing, and then clinical trials, which you might call human testing, before the drugs get to market. It costs a lot of money, a lot of time, and sometimes, even when a drug hits the market, it acts in an unpredictable way and actually hurts people. And the later it fails, the worse the consequences. It all boils down to two issues. One, humans are not rats, and two, despite our incredible similarities to one another, actually those tiny differences between you and I have huge impacts with how we metabolize drugs and how those drugs affect us. So what if we had better models in the lab that could not only mimic us better than rats but also reflect our diversity? Let’s see how we can do it with tissue engineering. One of the key technologies that’s really important is what’s called induced pluripotent stem cells. They were developed in Japan pretty recently. Okay, induced pluripotent stem cells. They’re a lot like embryonic stem cells except without the controversy. We induce cells, okay, say, skin cells, by adding a few genes to them, culturing them, and then harvesting them. So they’re skin cells that can be tricked, kind of like cellular amnesia, into an embryonic state. So without the controversy, that’s cool thing number one. Cool thing number two, you can grow any type of tissue out of them: brain, heart, liver, you get the picture, but out of your cells. So we can make a model of your heart, your brain on a chip. Generating tissues of predictable density and behavior is the second piece, and will be really key towards getting these models to be adopted for drug discovery. And this is a schematic of a bioreactor we’re developing in our lab to help engineer tissues in a more modular, scalable way. Going forward, imagine a massively parallel version of this with thousands of pieces of human tissue. It would be like having a clinical trial on a chip. But another thing about these induced pluripotent stem cells is that if we take some skin cells, let’s say, from people with a genetic disease and we engineer tissues out of them, we can actually use tissue-engineering techniques to generate models of those diseases in the lab. Here’s an example from Kevin Eggan’s lab at Harvard. He generated neurons from these induced pluripotent stem cells from patients who have Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and he differentiated them into neurons, and what’s amazing is that these neurons also show symptoms of the disease. So with disease models like these, we can fight back faster than ever before and understand the disease better than ever before, and maybe discover drugs even faster. This is another example of patient-specific stem cells that were engineered from someone with retinitis pigmentosa. This is a degeneration of the retina. It’s a disease that runs in my family, and we really hope that cells like these will help us find a cure. So some people think that these models sound well and good, but ask, “Well, are these really as good as the rat?” The rat is an entire organism, after all, with interacting networks of organs. A drug for the heart can get metabolized in the liver, and some of the byproducts may be stored in the fat. Don’t you miss all that with these tissue-engineered models? Well, this is another trend in the field. By combining tissue engineering techniques with microfluidics, the field is actually evolving towards just that, a model of the entire ecosystem of the body, complete with multiple organ systems to be able to test how a drug you might take for your blood pressure might affect your liver or an antidepressant might affect your heart. These systems are really hard to build, but we’re just starting to be able to get there, and so, watch out. But that’s not even all of it, because once a drug is approved, tissue engineering techniques can actually help us develop more personalized treatments. This is an example that you might care about someday, and I hope you never do, because imagine if you ever get that call that gives you that bad news that you might have cancer. Wouldn’t you rather test to see if those cancer drugs you’re going to take are going to work on your cancer? This is an example from Karen Burg’s lab, where they’re using inkjet technologies to print breast cancer cells and study its progressions and treatments. And some of our colleagues at Tufts are mixing models like these with tissue-engineered bone to see how cancer might spread from one part of the body to the next, and you can imagine those kinds of multi-tissue chips to be the next generation of these kinds of studies. And so thinking about the models that we’ve just discussed, you can see, going forward, that tissue engineering is actually poised to help revolutionize drug screening at every single step of the path: disease models making for better drug formulations, massively parallel human tissue models helping to revolutionize lab testing, reduce animal testing and human testing in clinical trials, and individualized therapies that disrupt what we even consider to be a market at all. Essentially, we’re dramatically speeding up that feedback between developing a molecule and learning about how it acts in the human body. Our process for doing this is essentially transforming biotechnology and pharmacology into an information technology, helping us discover and evaluate drugs faster, more cheaply and more effectively. It gives new meaning to models against animal testing, doesn’t it? Thank you. (Applause)

Why can't we do both? Learning to take care of our bodies and treating the symptoms and the problems, too? You can not live under a glass bell in a lab, with no pollution and no stress and no accidents!

It was either this or robotics that was gonna be my life story. Sadly, I knew I would envy the other no matter what I chose. So it was ultimately robotics, and I'll just have to go with the fact that development like this will always amaze me. But hey, it makes the world charming.

Why is that huh? Is it because you want to continue eating garbage perceived as food, get cancer, and just implant engineered tissue/organs into your body?

the solution to cancer is eating foods and doing the things that help your immune system fight off and destroy cancer, tumors, etc… And also eating natural, organic foods and doing things that are not destructive to your mind and body prevents cancer.

If you think the medical establishment functions to help you, then you are a fool. They prescribe medication and perform surgeries that either worsens your condition or temporarily hinders the symptoms.. not the root of the problem which is a destructive lifestyle many chose to live.

Perhaps the pharmaceutical industry should stop creating and along with the FDA, stop allowing these neurotoxins, glutamates, and excitotoxins, etc into our food supply that are causing these health issues you are highlighting. However that would put an end to the billions of dollars profited via a sick society. 🙂

I really like where this is going, but it seems an awful lot of research, time, and money for something that we could already do if it weren't for the public's squeamishness about cloning and genetic engineering. We're talking about new technology that could allow us to simulate the systems inside a living organism when we already have the technology to grow living organisms from scratch. With simulated reflexes it needn't have a brain and would only be considered "alive" in the broadest terms.

you believe this based on what evidence? Are people more sick then they were back in the day? do they live shorter lives in worse conditions? NO! the opposite is true. People not only live longer but they live healthier. There is no evidence to the contrary just people that want to believe otherwise. There is huge profit in health thats why there are so many doctors (they dont invent new medicines btw) And being driven by profit is good NOT bad. Drug engineering is also good.

The reason why drugs are so expensive is because its expensive to run the trials on animals and then on humans. It is actually very risky to be in the business of drug creation thats why only richest of the rich are able to do it. You need to invest billions into a project before you see any of your money back. And that is the fault of the government.

How ignorant can you be? Did you ever took a class that studies cancer? Do you know how complicated cancer actually is? And you are doubly ignorant because curing cancer is like winning a lottery. If you can patent something that cures one type of cancer you put all your competition out of a job but you put yourself as the monopoly over the business. People are still going to get cancer but now they are forced to buy your treatment to cure it. Anyone would be rich beyond their imagination.

I actually do believe that greed and selfishness is really beneficial. And no selling poisonous food doesnt bring much profit. First of all unhealthy food is not necessarily cheaper to produce than healthy food. Second of all people will not buy unhealthy food if its labeled properly. Third of all you will get sued and loose all your money and go to jail since its illegal to mislabel products.
&you dont know waht cellulose is. Its not saw dust. Its actually good for you because it acts as fiber

ok your first paragraph just restates your belief with no backing. Its not profitable to sell poisonous food. Most food is not poisonous in nature so you would need to make it poisonous and on top of that you would loose your customers pretty quickly. Making very little profit if any.

You can prove a product gave you cancer there are known carcinogens and if you find these in your food you can sue the person who sold it to you.

Dude dont claim i live in a different reality when its you that just makes claims and doesnt back them. You need evidence to state something. You say government helps in exchange for money but what proof do you have for that?

first of all pick up a container of organic milk. All organic milk has to say by law that there is no difference in molecular structure of organic and non organic milk. Cows treated with the hormone do not have that hormone in their milk. The milk is identical. Just google image "organic milk government label" Fourth image its on all organic milk containers. So much misinformation!

The other things you are talking about are scandals that cause huge losses for the companies. (if true) SO if there is melamine mixed with cyanuric acid in the baby formula it causes the company to loose tons of money if they are discovered. And sure government is far from perfect but believing in conspiracy theories with little to no evidence is much more harmful. Saying that companies usually benefit from harming its consumers is obviously not true.

And there are fucked up things government did and is probably doing right now, but instead of naively believing in falsehoods try to find out what is really true or not. Skeptics.stackexchange is a good website to start on. And if you looking for a shocking true story done by government look up MK Ultra and especially MK Delta. Where government was raising little children to be prostitutes. making little girls suck on male parts instead of breasts to increase sexuality.

You know what a rationalization is? You are prevented with evidence counter to your argument and you use it to support your argument. If government was so corrupt that this label was false than it be pretty easy to prove it by testing it. Why isnt it a scandal and why arent people mass suing government to take that label off? You know why thats not happening because the label is true. You live in a reality you create for yourself

btw dude you just got your lucky day. I will give you 200 dollars if you can prove that organic milk is different from rBHG milk in any way. I would give more but im pretty broke at the moment. maybe other people can join in to help me out. I keep my promises so you are guaranteed 200 dollars if you prove it.

Personalized medicine is the future period. What we envisioned in sci-fi movies and TV shows like Star Trek will become reality this century. I dont think there is any question about the leaps humans can make when they put their collective minds to it. Public support will be the key.